The operation in Mackie Control with Arturia Keylab Essential is OK, except:
-save
-undo
-punch record
-metronome
-can not navigate the tracks up/down to select them: it's a shame because you can not select a MIDI track to change the virtual instrument quickly

For information: the DAW command center of the Keylab Essential can not be assigned in MIDI learn, this is normal since the DAW must be 100% compatible Mackie control.

Did you figure more of that stuff out since september? I just changed my MIDI controller from a Novation Launchkey 49 MK2 to an Arturia Keylab Essential 61-key, and i'm having some headaches setting it up properly...

Hi Olivier I didn't make out the time to play with Mixcraft 9 and my Keylab Essential 61 too much, but that's too bad... I thought getting an Arturia MIDI controller in the first place would have made everything simple and fully-working out-of-the-box, but I guess there are some qwirks with every technology/product.

Do manufacturers tend to publish their protocols or is that more of a back channel thing?

Each manufacturer has its own coding and ways to assign the actions of the device, they have programs that let you assign their cc/midi to it and then the DAW has to be assigned to those parameters. That's where the problem is for the DAW template, the setup of the device software can be different than the preset template.

The developer could get the template from users with the command set but that could be a huge pain too. So it's on the user to do what they need, not hard but pretty tedious if you have a device with a ton of features.

I have an Akai APC 25 I'd like to get programmed up. Right now the grid buttons just play MIDI notes, along with everything else I'd imagine. I tried doing MIDI learn on it once but it was an exercise in futility. Plus the lights wouldn't light up anyway even if the rest of it got sorted out.

The Akai should have software that you can program. I have an lpd 8 and I've gotten pretty good at it with Ezdrummer 2. Make sure you know the cc# of your keys and pads then midi learn in MC accordingly.

The Keylab Essential works correctly on the preset DAW and Mackie Control in Mixcraft 9. But, this is versatile, I don't know why, sometimes it doesn't work ! With the beta version of MC 9 all the buttons worked even "save, undo, punch, metro" but I don't know why or how !?
I think the problem comes from Mackie Control protocol of MC9 ??
I can see in C:\ProgramData\Acoustica\Mixcraft\ButtonControllers many ".ini" file. Greg, where is the ".ini" Mackie Control file ?
Greg, if you have any idea. Maybe you can ask to Arturia America to lend you a demo model for testing.